An Early-20th-Century British Map of the Global Drug Trade

An Early-20th-Century British Map of the Global Drug Trade

This map of trade in opium and other drugs appeared in J.G. Bartholomew's Atlas of the World's Commerce, published in London in 1907. The book offered maps of infrastructure, communications, and exports, accompanied by statistical diagrams and interpretations; the David Rumsey Map Collection has digitized the atlas, and you can view the rest of it here.

The drug exports charted on this map include camphor (once used in a wide variety of medical and nonmedical applications), cinchona (used to treat malaria), castor oil, ginseng, licorice, and peppermint, along with those we'd recognize as illegal "drugs" today: opium and coca.